accessories and fashion

Own a piece of Batman film history, with a steel-alloy representation of the 1989 Batmobile from Tim Burton's hit Batman. This is one of the most suped-up of all Batman's rides, loaded with enough explosives to take out as ma...

PokemonCenter.com has officially opened up, offering up several different kinds of Pokemon-branded merchandise. Apparel, iPhone cases, Pokemon Trading Card Game products and more are available, but what you're probably most c...

I'm a big fan of the brightly colored and exciting designs of Jerome Lu and Hyperactive Monkey! This year at WonderCon their booth was as bright as always, and included several cool pieces. The Glow-in-the-Dark Spirit Pocket ...

Those folks at Kuso Vinyl are at it again. They're having another sale on all their stuff around the holidays, so if you wanted to pick something up from Kuso for a friend, family member or yourself, now is a pretty good time...

If you've been waiting on picking something up from the Kuso Vinyl or KusoPop shops, this Friday is a good chance to do so. Both sites are having a sale on everything in stock at the stores for 40 percent off. That's apparel,...

Have you ever wanted to wear an anime character in your ear? Well, if you are like me then the thought would never cross your mind, at least until you saw these capsule toys made by Kitan. Kitan made sets of ear plugs that fe...

Kidrobot has a new collection of items coming out, in collaboration with (RED) and the Keith Haring Studio, to mark World AIDS Day 2013. The (RED) Collection merchandise will have 5 percent of its sales go toward fightin...

At DesignerCon, Hyperactive Monkey unleashed a new jade version of the Pocket Master figure. It's not made of actual jade, but resin, though it could look the part. It was also their event exclusive, but not the only thing at...

The folks at Ink It Labs brought plenty of wooden collectibles with them to DesignerCon 2013. Those included Scott Tolleson's Lil Rufus, the S.S. Meow Meow from Crowded Teeth, Onorio D'Epiro's Flower Eater, and-&nbs...

No, that's not someone's attempt at a fury costume. That is, in fact, a real, honest to goodness Voltron hoodie that you can buy right now from 80sTees.com. There are a lot of character hoodies out there, but we've never seen...

LEGO is preparing to launch a whole new line of timepieces this November that will be aimed at adults for the first time ever. Up until now, their watches have only been made for kids.
The line will be called LEGO Watch...

Vannen Watches' latest is a new timepiece with art designed by Kronk called Rat Basterd. Using Kronk's style — which is based off tattoos and as I just learned, old-school animation — the watch is his take on a Mi...

Just a quick heads up if you're a Yosiell Lorenzo fan: he's got two new T-shirts available in his shop right now. The Bury Your Secrets shirt is based off an earlier print Yosiell released, while Spirit Board Vessel features an Ouija-inspired design.
Both shirts are available for US$25 in Yosiell's shop. Going to pick either one up?

Hello Kitty had a presence all over SDCC this year, but the main focus here will be on Sanrio's booths themselves. A lot of you might have heard that they were having a pop-up shop in Petco Park outside of the convention. Thi...

What did Hasbro have to offer in the MLP realm?SDCC and I go way back, of course with a lot of us it does, but for a strange reason on my end. Every year it's my goal to get the My Little Pony exclusive of the year. This was the first year I was able to be there to obtain...

Tokidoki will once again be partnering up with famous fashion designer, Karl Lagerfeld. With this new collaboration, tokidoki will be releasing another Lagerfeld figure, this time called "Mr. Choupette". This limited edition...

For the 20th anniversary of Sailor Moon, Bandai created a special makeup collection for their cosmetic brand, Creer Beaute. Their first release was the Sailor Moon R Miracle Romance Shining Moon Powder. Now their second rele...

Ladies, now you can be fashionable, and show that you're a fan of Sailor Moon. For the 20th anniversary of Sailor Moon, Bandai is adding Sailor Moon themed items to their Creer Beaute cosmetic brand. Their first release from...

Everyone's putting on their best Star Wars-May 4 puns in anticipation for Saturday (i.e. Super7's May the 4th Be With You event), and OutsmART Originals is jumping in with the May the 4th One Be Free sale. Yep; it's buy-three...

Bacon: it's what's popular. And it's also a theme for OutsmART Originals' new original apparel line called The Bacon University. There's six shirts in total in the Bacon University shop, and while all aren't university appare...

Soon you will have a chance to show your love for a little stranger's lovable Cavey plushes just by answering your phone. Two adorable iPhone case designs (available for both iPhone 4/4s and 5) were revealed on the ...

On April 22, an interesting tweet was spotted from the Twitter feed of Hidemi Matsuzuka, the General Manager of the Square-Enix figure brand. It looks like plush phone mascots from Theatrhythm Final Fantasy are in the works. ...

Over in Japan, Miyazawa Model Expo 31 has been bringing us closer views of upcoming toys. Here we're going to take a look at the offerings from COSPA and Ensky. COSPA focuses on two titles, The Idolm@ster and Super Danga...

Artist, Jerome Lu, was in attendance at the Hyperactive Monkey booth during WonderCon. He had a con-exclusive glow-in-the-dark Monkey Bank (US$80), as well as limited amounts of his SDCC 2012 exclusive Ebony Edition Master Ba...

So, let's kick off our WonderCon 2013 coverage with a little bit of fluffy flatness: that is, the plush creations of Flat Bonnie. Of course, she had her two exclusives on hand, Shelbun and the Woolly Mammoth plush. But a...

Mar 26 //
Brian SzabelskiFigure Name: Kidrobot x Street Fighter two-figure packsFigure Maker: KidrobotRetail Price: US$17.95Available at: Kidrobot.com and most major retailers (starting March 28, 2013)
As we always do, we start with the box. Instead of the usual, thin blind box ... box, the two-figure packs have a much sturdier design with a tab-opening top. The 2P figure is open windowed, held on its plastic backing with a twist tie, while the 1P figure is hidden inside the packaging.
What I really like about the box is that it feels like Kidrobot designed it for the Street Fighter fan. The top of the box features the timer, score and health bars, along with the names of the respective fighters underneath. The back panel features the list of figures and their ratios, designed to look a bit like the franchise's character select screen. On either side is an informational bio of the character in the box; of course, this means the random character doesn't have any info displayed, for obvious reasons.
One thing is for certain: all the little elements here actually add up to produce a box that's much, much better than what Kidrobot's done in some time. The Street Fighter fan in me likes the little things they've done on the design front here to make it feel like a Street Fighter product and not just a Kidrobot one.
As for what's inside, what you see is what you get; one blind-boxed figure and one open-boxed figure. There's not much that's changed from a design perspective; they're still using the same Udon-designed look for the World Warriors and the figures still have articulated head and shoulder joints. For those of you wondering, these are a new production run for all the figures. The designs, though, are the same except for the addition of the four bosses' second-player colorways, which are the open-boxed figures in the two-figure packs.
I ended up with another second-player Dhalsim. Such is the way of the blind box. But let's take a quick look at M. Bison, who we haven't seen before:
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Also, Bison's hat is a removable piece, should you want to see his hair. It just feels so wrong to see him without that hat on his head, though.
The hat features all the details one should expect on it, and the paint is not as rough as I had expected. They've even painted the little brass buttons on the hat, and the Shadoloo emblem on Bison's hat has been resculpted here with enough detail so you can tell what it is.
It doesn't mean the figures are completely without fault, though. As you can see on Bison, the machine that put the lines on the body for Bison's overcoat was a little bit off, so the lines don't match up perfectly. It does suck to still see a production error here, but when weighed against some of the ones I saw in Series 1, I would rather have something that doesn't bother me as much as those paint splotches did.
Speaking of paint splotches ...
The other two-figure set we got was the second-player Vega box. Those of you who remember my initial review also probably remember that my Vega figure has a number of issues with paint and other details being sloppy. That means we should probably compare the two to see
No surprise; it's a night and day difference. While my original Vega isn't as mint as the one we just opened out of the box, you can see a few differences. For one, there's no ugly paint slop on his claw. The paint lines seem a little cleaner as well, though there's still that weird thing with the eyes. I guess that's a design choice instead of being a production error, and I can live with it.
The only issue I had was that the paint doesn't quite go all the way down to the hairline on the newer Vega. It's as if they erred on the side of not getting paint outside the lines and did the work a little short. Now, the good news for Kidrobot perhaps is that the base underneath might be brown, too, which could mute some of the issues, at least from a distance.
The second figure in the Vega box?
Another new figure for my collection from Series 1: Ken! As you might expect, he's awfully similar in design to Ryu, with a different head sculpt. The paint is clean, the design fits Ken, and beyond that, it's pretty much the same as the other figures from the two-figure packs.
Kidrobot had something else in the box they sent me, though ...
Product: Kidrobot x Street Fighter enamel keychainsMaker: KidrobotRetail Price: US$4.95Available at: Kidrobot.com and most major retailers (starting March 28, 2013)
Here's the packaging for the keychains. Fairly simple, and they're blind-bagged like the figures are. They open from the top (where the little notch is) and the package does what it needs to do with few frills.
What you'll find inside is this: a randomly packaged keychain and matching backing card. Probably what you expected to find, no? Let's take a closer look:
The backing card for the keychains is actually pretty cool; it's themed to resemble the versus screen from the earlier Street Fighter games, with the original win quotes under each fighter from Street Fighter II. On each side in the black strip is each fighter's most famous special attack (the spam-tastic Hundred Hand Slap for Honda and the Yoga Fire for Dhalsim) with the corresponding input. These are really nice touches to see, especially for a Street Fighter fan such as myself.
As for the actual keychain ... it looks very cool. Definitely something you could wear out in public and not really get too many stares from. The finish on the enamel looks great, the paint is clean, and the entire piece has some heft to it. But what's even better is what you can't see:
I was certainly not expecting to see the same info on the backing card engraved into the back of the keychain. ------
Just to make sure it wasn't some one-off deal, I opened a second blind package and got the Guile/Bison keychain. It's exactly as described above, just with different characters
It seems, really, that Kidrobot learned from the pratfalls of the first Kidrobot x Street Fighter run and made some positive changes. The two-figure packs still have that bit of randomness in them, but the second production run figures definitely appear to suffer from far fewer quality control errors than the first run did. The inclusion of the four boss characters' second-player versions as the open-boxed figure was also a nice decision for collectors who were probably stressing out trying to get Sagat or Bison. Not saying I was one of those collectors or anything ...
Plus, the new keychains are more impressive than I expected them to be. For what amounts to US$5, you're actually getting a fairly sturdy and well produced enamel keychain. The keychains are worth it for the fans unless you really, really hate the character designs. But since you're reading this review ... my guess is you don't, right?
[Thanks to Kidrobot for sending us samples to review!]

Twice is nice for this blind-boxed seriesAlmost a year and a half ago, Kidrobot released its first Street Fighter mini-figure series. I reviewed them, and found them to be good, but not without some serious quality control issues. We know Series 2 is on the way, but...

The ever popular fire Pokemon, Charizard, now has a new line of items available for purchase. Exclusively in Japan, a new Charizard campaign has been released in Pokemon Centers. This campaign features a good selection of ite...

Battle it out with your favorite Street Fighter characters! Kidrobot is releasing two new series of toys for Street Fighter fans. Starting March 28 in stores and online, you'll be able to find 2-packs of vinyl figures and enamel keychains featuring some of your favorite Street Fighte...